1. What made you write a book about the phenomenon of
underachievement?

In 1990, when I
launched the Maximum Potential Project, I had been in private practice
as a psychologist for over 15 years in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb
of Lafayette, seeing adults, couples, families, and adolescents in
groups. Over that period, I estimated that probably 80% of the families
who came to see me mentioned their children's school performance as a
major concern. Many of these parents were tortured by seeing their
children fail to take hold and make use of their talent.

In response to this my associates and I developed a radical new approach
to dealing with underachievement that involved a group for the
adolescents, therapy sessions for the family as a whole, and a skills
group for parents. This combination of tools delivered in a structured
four and a half month format reached these kids and their parents and
turned them around. Word got out and during an interview on a local NPR
affiliate an adult called in saying he was an underachieving kid who
felt he never outgrew it. On the basis of that phone call my associates
developed a program for adults.

Writing the book was a natural outgrowth of wanting a wider audience of
people to know that the problem of underachieving could not only be
understood but remedied. As you know, however, though the word
underachievement is in the subtitle of the book, I do not use the term
much. It is a judgmental term and I prefer the more descriptive
Self-Limiting High Potential Person (SLHPP).

2. During the
research and writing phase of your book did you reflect upon your
own struggles with underachievement?

I certainly did. I
recognized early on that though I had achieved a number of
external markers of achievement, the challenges that underachievers
acutely face were ones with which I not only had to wrestle, but
likewise as did most other people I knew. Who doesn't from time to time
take the easy way out, cut losses, settle for less? Who isn't tempted by
shortcuts? Those who succeed keep these self-limiting choices at bay and
prevent them from becoming habitual by developing a structure of habits
that are just slightly different in terms of work orientation,
promptness of action, follow through, and persistence. Cumulatively,
these small differences make a huge difference.

3. In your opinion
how does underachievement adversely affect those working in the creative
arts industry?

In the creative
arts, people's efforts are so completely exposed that fears of ridicule
and failure are hugely magnified. Plus in the creative arts people are
striving to say something new in fresh ways. Brain surgeons people who
have to take risks with life and death matters do not try to be creative
every time out, and don't have an audience or critics watching
their every move while they are them. Those in the creative arts really
put themselves out there. It takes courage and it is by no means easy.
Plus success is difficult to attain and maintain.

Therefore it is tempting to engage in behaviors designed to avoid
defining moments and to sidestep challenges. In the process you can
drastically limit yourself. If you repeat those behaviors they easily
become habitual because in the immediate moment they work in the sense
that they reduce anxiety. "Whew! I didn't have to fail." If
you can come up with an explanation for not trying, you are perilously
close to falling into making excuses. Then you are also well on your way
to limiting your possibilities to achieve.

4. What’s the
difference between underachievement and just plain laziness?

Underachievement
is a whole complex of self-limiting habits and thinking patterns that
certainly can involve laziness. However, very ambitious, hugely
energetic people can achieve far less than they otherwise would by
setting conflicting goals and engaging in self-handicapping and other
self-defeating behaviors. Everyone has some proportion of laziness.
Underachievement is usually something more than just that.

5. Do you have
plans to write a book about overachievement?

I doubt it, but
who knows? I don't much like the concept of overachievement. How can you
achieve more than you are able to? I think the term suggests that you
can achieve too much to make other people feel comfortable and you ought
to keep a lid on it. Women have suffered through that one for centuries.

It is clearly true that some people bury themselves in doing at the
expense of being, or embed themselves in career to avoid the
vicissitudes of relationships. Overwork is often a way of dodging areas
of your life where you question your abilities to succeed. If you
succeed in career but it costs you in terms of relationships perhaps
what appears to be achievement is really an avoidance of taking risks
with intimacy.

6. Any
tips for folks struggling to break out of the cycle of underachievement
?

1. You have to
make a definitive, unequivocal, no turning back decision to permanently
change your work orientation and your habits.
2. You have to find trustworthy support and get them to guarantee that
they will insist that you stay on track.
3. You need to plug into a larger vision and sense of purpose.
4. You need a plan and a systematic approach.
5. You need to carefully choose which things to put effort into and to
avoid dead ends that suck your energy.

My book contains 15 Tasks designed to replace self-limiting,
self-defeating habits with new effective ones. It requires hard work for
a time but only hard work and only for a time. Once you set up a
structure of new habits you must work to maintain them but they actually
make life easier in the long run. And much more satisfying.